Stellar Envoy

[Andy Moore]

Stellar Envoy

(AKA Millennium Falcon)

 

I've had Bandai's little box scale Falcon sitting about in a base coat for a while, and since I was waiting for some filler to dry on the Gigant, I decided to get some more work done on it. I wasn't originally planning to do a wip for it, so I don't have any construction pics, but there's not really much to these vehicle model kits, and this is built OOB anyway.

I have taken some photos of the painting steps though, so I thought I might as well post them.

 

As the title implies, this is being done as the Stellar Envoy which, if you don't know the Star Wars EU that well, was the Millennium Falcon in a previous life, before Lando acquired it and then lost it to Han. The main difference between the Stellar Envoy and the Falcon we all know and love, is the blue deco over the hull, and that's going to form the bulk of the paintwork I'll have to do.

 

To begin with, the whole ship was base coated in a pale warm grey

 

 

I then spent this morning painting in some random panels in various warm and cool grey shades, using thinned acrylics and some washes. These aren't matched to the Falcon's panels, or even to the few reference images of the Envoy. It's just going to be my take on the ship

 

 

Tonight was spent masking up and painting the first of the blue markings. I've started with the curved sections, as they're the trickiest to do. The masking for the edges of the curves were cut with a compass cutter, then the rest of the area covered with silly putty. While the blue paint was still a bit soft, I made a few scratches in it to give it a more weathered look

 

 

I'll be fitting the work on this around the Gigant, so I'll probably be switching back and forth between the two over the next few days.

 

Andy

 

 

[R0ver]

Yaaas! Been looking forward to seeing this. It's already looking much bigger than it is in actuality, what with the individual panel shading. Looks excellent so far. 

[Madmonk]

Great start Andy, you just have to admire the detail on this little kit.

 

Will be watching with interest as I plan on doing a similar thing with one of Revell's big scale easy kits.

[Gimme Shelter]

you're so bloody annoyingly brilliant at this stuff Andy ! I need some tips as to how you mask such a tight tidy line across such a distorted bumpy surface like the top side of a YT1300

[Andy Moore]

Thanks John, but there's nothing that fancy going on with the masking. Just lots of tiny bits of Tamiya tape. I'll show some pics of the next masking steps though, if it helps.

 

I'm doing the masking in stages, since getting every section masked in one go would be nigh on impossible in the scale. It's a bit of a pain doing it that way, as I'm using a custom mix for the blue, so I need to match it each time. It's not a complex mix though so it's not a big deal. For anyone interested it's 3 parts Vallejo 966 Turquoise to 1 part AMMO 063 Pale Grey.

 

I've done the bulk of the rest of the upper markings in this session, mainly the engine deck, the chevron in the centre, the back of the gun surround and the edges of the mandibles. As you can probably tell by the blue staining, I'm reusing a lot of the tape from the previous masking session. Yes, I am that tight, and I won't throw tape away until it's unusable.

 

 

For areas where the tape's going over raised detail, like the pipes on the nose, I used a short stiff bristled brush to press the tape as tightly as possible over the surface. It's impossible to get it completely perfect, but if the paint's sprayed at 90 degrees to the surface, there's virtually no bleed, or soft edges.

 

 

For any curved sections, I measure the the radius from wherever the centre point is (the rear edge of the gun glazing in the case of the Falcon's main saucer), set the compass cutter to that measurement, and cut the arc

 

 

For the main bands on the Falcon's hull I didn't cut one big curve. I used short overlapping section of tape instead, as it was easier to manipulate it over small details that way

 

 

Once all the sections where marked out with tape, I filled in the surrounding area with silly putty, and it does get quite hard to handle at this stage, as everywhere you touch it the putty sticks to your fingers. Most of the illustrations of the Stellar Envoy seem to show the surrounds to the engine grills still in grey, so I had to mask these off too, and it was easier to do it with putty than try to cut tiny circles of tape. I spread the putty slightly beyond the edges of the surrounds to make sure they were fully covered. Any areas of the main deck that don't get hit with paint as a result can be touched in by brush at the end. That would be much easier than having to repaint any blue over-spray with the original pale grey

 

 

If you prod and poke the putty with a tooth pick you can get it to seal very tightly around any fine details. That was the easiest way of masking the side panels on the mandibles. I'd never have got such a tight edge with tape

 

 

With all that done I could spray the blue and strip the masking off to check if it had all worked, which for the most part it had. I did need to touch in the blue around the engine vents as I had expected to but, apart from that and a tiny bit of over-spray on the left mandible, where I'd obviously left a gap in the masking and not noticed, everything else look okay. And, yes, I did save all the bits of tape again

 

 

So, this is the state of play for this evening. The only remaining blue sections on the top are a couple of small squares at the ends of the mandibles, another couple on the airlocks, and some areas around the cockpit. After that there are some red markings, including an odd emblem design next to the main dish, then I'll have to figure out something for the underside, which will be more or less a work of fiction, as I don't know of any references for the bottom of the hull

 

 

Andy

 

 

[monsterpartyhat]

Wow. Very impressive work at that scale. 

 

I've found an unexpected tool works really well for sealing the edges of Tamiya masking tape -- I have an iFixit Spudger (https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/Spudger/IF145-002-2) that I used for mucking around inside laptops a while ago - the conical end turns out to be perfect for burnishing the edges of masking tape to get a good seal. I go over every edge with tiny little strokes, from the inside out towards the edge.

[R0ver]

Good shout re. the spudger above. I've used a guitar pick as well to help tape burnishing. I wonder how long it took you to mask all those bits...

 

Had never thought of using silly putty before, but it seems like an excellent way of avoiding overspray and covering large areas (and bits like the engine grills). Lots of good tips here. 

 

It's looking absolutely spot on Andy. Although in all this time I had never thought there's no real evidence of what the underside should look like! 

[M_Sinclair]

Had no idea about the Falcon's previous history. The masking looks a nightmare but looks incredible wearing blue!

 

-matt

[Gimme Shelter]

Wow thanks for the tutorial in such a small scale 

[Pete in Lincs]

That looks great with the blue.

Looking forward to the rest of the paint.

[Niall]

For inspiration on other YT1300 varients check out this -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Millennium-Falcon-Owners-Workshop-Manual/dp/0345533046/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503673603&sr=8-1&keywords=haynes+millenium+falcon+manual

[Andy Moore]

7 hours ago, Niall said:

For inspiration on other YT1300 varients check out this -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Millennium-Falcon-Owners-Workshop-Manual/dp/0345533046/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503673603&sr=8-1&keywords=haynes+millenium+falcon+manual

Thanks Niall. I've actually got that one. It's one of the references I'm using for this build.

 

Andy

[Andy Moore]

Apologies for the lack of updates on this, and the Gigant. The last few days have been a bit hectic. I've managed to get some work done on the Envoy though.

When I left off before, I still needed to add the last few areas of blue to the upper body. Some of the masking for that was quite fiddly, especially for the small blue squares near the tips of the mandibles, but it all ended up looking fairly clean when the masking was removed

 

 

Unfortunately, i can't say the same for the scanner dish. I'd cut a round mask for the centre of the dish so I could paint the perimeter in blue but, as I was spraying it, the airbrush spat out a big wet glob of paint which then ran under the edges of the masking tape. To compound that, I'd cut the middle out of the circular mask so it would go over the raised section in the middle of the dish. I was intending to cover the resulting hole with masking fluid or silly putty but forgot, so the middle of the dish ended up blue as well

 

 

Overall I'm not bothered about it though. It's the only real masking issue I've had on the build, which I'm surprised about, given the small scale of the kit. The dish was stripped and repainted in the base coat, after which I painted the rim blue by hand, which proved far easier than masking it. Ironically I ended up painting the centre of the dish blue anyway, albeit slightly more neatly than the first unintentional attempt

 

After that I had the underside to paint, and the design for this was pretty much made up, just taking a few cues from the top side. All the blue areas had some scratches added, and I also gave them all a rub with a stiff brush which wore some of the paint from the raised details, and gave the blue a more weathered look

 

 

I gave the glazing a coat of black, gloss coated the whole thing, them moved on to the first weathering steps. It was only later that I realised I'd forgotten to add the red emblem and panels. The first weathering was a mid grey enamel pin wash, followed by some brown filters to add more shading around the raised details

 

 

I've now added the red bits (although the emblem's a bit crudely done) and a few more washes, and it's starting to look a bit more lively. Next step will be to add some airbrushed staining around the engines, and maybe some streaking, but I'll need to be careful about that or it'll look overdone in this scale

 

 

 

Andy

[Will Vale]

Looking great, the red does indeed bring it to life.

 

W

[Hunter Rose]

Yeah i agree,  the touch of red is a nice contrast, its looking nice

[Andy Moore]

Thanks Will, thanks Hunter

 

So, I've added some airbrush staining and some subtle streaking, and I think I'm going to call it done. Any more would over do it I think.

 

The airbrush work was done with a heavily thinned mix of Tamiya rubber black and smoke, sprayed around the engine vents and the maintenance wells, and the streaking was done with a combination of Citadel washes painted in thin lines and coloured pencils. I've also added a little more shading on some panels with the same Citadel washes. The last thing it had was a light matt coat to seal everything

 

 

 

 

I'll get the RFI photos up later. Thanks for following along with this, admittedly, rather brief wip. I'll be getting back to the Gigant now 

 

Andy

[Rwa66]

A very interesting choice, I wasn't aware of this earlier identity of the falcon.  Looks fantastic already.

Re the enamel wash; do you clear coat first and which make did you use?. I ask as I am aware that Bandai's plastic reacts and chips with too strong a solvent.

Cheers.

 

[Andy Moore]

21 minutes ago, Rwa66 said:

Re the enamel wash; do you clear coat first and which make did you use?. I ask as I am aware that Bandai's plastic reacts and chips with too strong a solvent.

 

I did in this case, with Tamiya X-22, but it was mainly to get the washes to flow better. I generally don't bother with a clear coat. I've found the Bandai plastic is fine unless you really go overboard with spirit based products, or let them sit on the surface for prolonged periods of time.

 

Andy

[Rwa66]

Thanks Andy, May also have to get one of these also, what a beautiful job you have done.